~ I propose to you that…

WHY? Is Michael Bay directing Transformers 5?

It is no secret to my friends and family that I am the antithesis of a Michael Bay fan. I hate hits writing, his direction, his racist and sexist stereotypes, and his sorry excuses for modern cinema. Unfortunately, Michael Bay directed films always seem to make much more money than any of them deserve. Granted, he does have his fans out there who do enjoy his movies as “good popcorn fun” but others take as much issue with him as I do and will hopefully agree with the question that I raise here.

When was the last time he made a good movie?

Now this is a little subjective as a question but film making is also a very technical art form. Looking at his movies objectively, they possess bland or disinteresting characters, contrived and repetitive plots, and action scenes that are far too complicated, overwhelming, and frankly quiet exhausting to watch. Yet, we will now break down how technically bad his movies are.

Characters

His characters can be unrealistic, such as Stanley Tucci or John Turturro in the Transformers franchise. They can be flat and very underdeveloped, such as all of the transformers with the exception of Optimus Prime. Or they can be offensive, such as several Transformers, Megan Fox’s character in Transformers, or Ken Jeong’s character from Transformers 3. You’ll notice that all of these choices are from the Transformers franchise and that’s the problem. Not that Bay doesn’t also have offensive stereotypes in his other movies, but it seems that he has the most free will with the characters in Transformers because he makes the most money from them. Money. The root of all evil. The reason Bay still has a job and isn’t smoking crack in an alley somewhere.

Plot

His characters are but a symptom of the overarching problem. This being the plot. He’s quiet literally made the same transformers movie 4 times with very little if any plot differentiation. Red letter media has an amazing video on their youtube channel. In said video, they watch the first 3 transformers movies right next to each other at the same time. During the video they comment on how similar the plots are and how they basically follow the same structure beat for beat. WHAT IS THE POINT? Why would you do that? It serves no purpose and only adds new elements that are superficial at best.

Action Scenes

It also doesn’t help that the plot is littered with action scenes that actually take away from the overall experience. Most all of the action in the Transformers movies specifically is impossible to follow. Most of it consists of large chunks of CGI metal clashing against other large chunks of CGI metal. Then after a few minutes of that nonsense, some nameless robot is dead on the ground. How is the action satisfying if we don’t know what happened, how it happened or who it happened to? They attempted to add some difference to the Transformers for Transformers 4 but that just made them look absolutely impractical and ridiculous. His other sad sad attempt of making the action followable is to shoot every action scene in superfluous slow motion. This only manages to prolong the torture and make the action slower nonsense. Michael Bay might need to go back to film school or to his friends or on the internet and learn what a long shot is and how not to shoot in gratuitous slow motion. It may be the only way.

I shouldn’t even get this mad because it’s just a movie. A movie that I will not see if I don’t want to but the illogic surrounding the situation is baffling to me. Now I’m not saying that Michael Bay will never make a good movie again. In fact, against my better judgement, i’m marginally excited for his next film, 13 hours.

Thanks for reading and i’d be great if you slapped your email in that follow box and left a comment about how much you also hate Michael Bay, or how i’m completely wrong, or whatever. It’d be much appreciated and i’m always looking for a conversation about the movies. Cheers, guys